Day #15--Smile for the Camera!

So I picked up the pictures we had taken of us as a family and of the boys yesterday. Most importantly, the boys were adorable, but also importantly, I had a few pictures in the bunch that were not so hideous they need to be burned! I was not optimistic about what the photo session would yield. I was pretty resigned to the idea of just picking the least hideous one and using it for the Christmas card as a sort of "just accept that this is what you look like" moment. I was pleasantly surprised to see that I actually looked fairly decent in one, and this made me think that while I've certainly "let myself go", things are often not nearly as awful as you imagine them to be in your head.

Another reason it boosted the old ego was because, as freaking precious and adorable as my sons are, not all of their pictures were winners. In fact, I literally laughed out loud when we got to a gem of a shot while Brendan was crying. As much as it's not nice to laugh at little babies, this was also nice to see because if human beings that I know are abnormally adorable can produce a few repulsive shots, then maybe the pictures of myself that make me cringe are anomalies as well. Maybe I shouldn't always take the negative stance and assume that every burnable picture is what I actually look like on a daily basis. We all have our bad angles, our bad moments, our bad days.

Today eating was pretty poor, but I did get my crunches and leg lifts in which was my goal. I'll try to post as often as possible in the next few days, but it might be a little difficult with Thanksgiving shenanigans! Enjoy your mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie, readers!

Day #12, #13, and #14--Crunches and Deep Dish

What have I been doing over the past three days? I don't know. Like most of my life, it's a whirlwind of babies, chores, sleep, and a little TV. I am getting a little down on myself about this whole thing because I feel like most of my goals are just unattainable with my current schedule. I also, equally as much, feel that that's just an excuse and I need to make time for these things.

The one good thing I've done a lot this weekend is abdominal exercise. After talking to a friend on Thursday who has last an insane amount of weight in the past 6 months, I was tempted to push myself to do more leg lifts, which he said were the key to his success. So I came home on Thursday night, blogged, and then crunched and leg lifted like a boss. The result? The next day I was nearly immobile by midafternoon. My pelvis, my hips, my abdomen...it all felt like it had been hit with a hammer. But it was the affirming kind of pain, the kind of pain that makes you feel more alive, so I did crunches and leg lifts all darned weekend. Unlike running and workout videos and the gym, leg lifts and crunches are something that I can do while playing on the floor with my kids. It's stuff like that that makes it easier for me to fit my exercise in to my busy life.

On another note, I'm really really worried about my upcoming trip to see my family. I live a lot of my life worried that someone is going to accidentally think I'm pregnant because I'm still so heavy, and I'm going to have to tell them that it's just me being fat--not a baby bump. That terrifies me. My family can sometimes be a little overly blunt (both mom's side and dad's side), and a lot of them are fairly fit, so I'm just worried that I'm going to get side-eyed a fair amount. It doesn't help that Greg has lost so much weight and that my cousin (who is tiny) had a baby a month before me so the comparison of our postpartum weight loss (or lack there of) is, unfortunately, inevitable.

Also, I hate eating as a fat person. It means that when you're eating, you have to be constantly worried that other people are looking at you and judging. Even if other people are eating just as much because, after all, it's vacation and it's Thanksgiving, you know you're going to get judged for it tenfold. Maybe that's all in my head, but I hate having to feel that way. I'm going to try to not let it ruin my trip and my Thanksgiving though. I'm going to enjoy myself and set a few tangible goals that I can meet during a vacation week.

Oh...the one goal that I did hit was the "trying something new" goal. I took the boys to Picture People for their first little family photo shoot today. They were surprisingly well-behaved, but Brendan was kinda stingy with the smiles. Hopefully we got some good Christmas card shots, and hopefully my ugly mug isn't too unsightly to put into print.

Goals for next week:
-Workout (walk, workout video, etc) at least twice
-Do crunches or leg lifts every day
-Finally write SOMETHING in my novel
-Eat without feeling guilty about it

Day #11: Movies as Inspiration

I need to watch more movies with hardcore, tough characters in them. Tonight I went to the double feature of The Hunger Games and The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, so of course that means I did nothing positive in the healthy eating or working out departments, but I did realize something about myself when it comes to goals.

I don't want to be skinny, exactly. I actually sort of have no interest in that side of it at all. I want to be a beast. Now maybe this is the very butch side of me showing through, but I want to be muscular, strong, and imposing. When I think about the images and media that inspire me to workout, I don't think of women in pretty dresses. Instead, I think about characters like Matt Damon from Elysium or Michonne from The Walking Dead. I don't want to be dainty. I don't really even want to look good in clothes. Instead, I want to be able to run farther, lift more, punch harder, etc. I never claimed to be very girly.

So one of my goals for the weekend is going to be to make a fitspiration collage to put on my phone, my laptop, and maybe the fridge, or male and female characters and people who inspire me with their hardcore buffness and butt-kick-ery. And maybe I'll actually do a few crunches before bed tonight. Because how am I ever going to survive The Hunger Games with this flabby core? lol.

Day #10--Saved by the Blog

I woke up this morning feeling like someone had put a burning hot stone in my stomach. Additionally, I felt shaky, feverish and groggy. The groggy is certainly just because six hours is an insufficient duration for sleep, but the rest is all because of the overeating I did polishing off most of the leftovers last night.

Whenever I eat well for a bit and then relapse onto my evil ways, I find my body's reaction quite unsettling. My body acts as though it has been poisoned, which it more or less has been. This begs the question, do I just feel about 50% worse than I need to feel most of the time as a product of my diet and I'm unaware because it's so consistent? Sadly, I think the answer is yes.

All that being said, did I learn from that shaky and uncomfortable start to the day? Not really. A student brought cookies to school for his birthday, so of course that was my lunch because I'm foolish. To be honest, if I'd counted, I probably wouldn't have been that far over, but I didn't count so I can't even play that card.

I almost had another total loss of a day. I was busy taking care of the boys, washing dishes, folding laundry, putting up Christmas decorations, cleaning up the boys' toys, finishing up some work that I brought home and taking a shower, so I was about to say "meh...forget it...", but then I thought about the prospect of having to write something entirely depressing and forged out of failure once again. I just couldn't do that, despite the fact that time and my own energy level would've made it very easy.

I didn't do much by most people's standards. I tried one of the "1 mile walk" 15 minute workouts on OnDemand because that's what I had the time and energy for, but it actually (sadly perhaps) kind of kicked my butt. I was certainly sweating almost immediately and I felt like it was definitely doing my body good (even though it felt like someone was stabbing me in my calves). The "host" is named Kendra Kemerly. To be honest, I was a little disappointed initially to see that it wasn't Leslie Sansone, the annoying but sort of love-to-hate New Yorker type, who hosts all the walking workout videos I've done before. However, after a meer sixty seconds, I already vastly preferred Kemerly to Sansone.

Kemerly has a familiar aura to her, and something about her demeanor makes her seem completely free of judgement, a trait that's difficult to find in workout video hosts. Despite the fact that she's a tiny little bulldog without an ounce of fat on her, her incredible body somehow doesn't seem unachievable and she has a normalcy to her look and tone that makes working out feel less like a punishment for being obese (this is why I hate Jillian Michaels, but I know I'm in the minority there).

For those familiar with Leslie Sansone's Walk Away the Pounds series, Kemerly's moves and patterns will feel so familiar that you won't have that awkward first time going through a workout video that I despise where you're fumbling around trying to keep up (as if you didn't already feel totally lame exercising in your living room). My one complaint is that there was virtually no warm up or cool down, so next time I'll be stretching beforehand for sure, but for something I just randomly found on OnDemand, I was very very pleased. I'll be doing it again because it was an excellent workout for someone like me who is on a time budget.

Despite how much I enjoyed working out once I had finished it, I wouldn't have worked out if it weren't for this blog and if it weren't for you: the loving, masochistic person still reading this. Sometimes the prospect of having to report my failure is motivation enough not to fail. Now the eating just needs to follow.

Day #8 & #9: Reflections on Failure

I have had a bad few days. It turns out (who knew!?) that having an ungodly amount of leftover french bread, chocolate cake, spinach pizza, and rotini in your house doesn't exactly lead to diligence and devotion in the calorie counting department. Furthermore, it seems that my whole "this week is a really stressful week" situation at work might just be more like a "this is a real stressful thirty years" situation at work. Add in another million excuses here, like how I have to spend all of my baby-free, non-work time either doing chores or sleeping, and you have the result that I see in the mirror every day. I wish someone would invent Hermione's time turner from Harry Potter (I know; my geek is showing) because I would make very very good use of it.

Luckily, the leftovers are almost gone and I think tomorrow I'll be able to regain my footing. The good news about my eating in the last two days has been that despite the fact that I've eaten a lot, none of it has been purchased. That means that while I'm not counting, I'm also not taking advantage of the fact that I'm not counting to act like a total idiot. This is something I definitely would've done a while ago, so that's a baby step forward.

Otherwise, I just need to get on it. There's no secret. There's no time turner. There are no magic tricks. There is only reality, and I can either stop whining about it and get on it, or keep whining and buy bigger pants and never finish my novel. I don't think that's gonna make me happy, so I'll go with the first option.

Before I go to bed for my luxurious six hours of sleep, I want to touch briefly on something that I think many of us do that is no good whatsoever and leads to all of our failures--we enable and we allow other people to be our scapegoat. First, let's talk about enabling. This is something that I've witnessed a lot of in my life, but here I want to talk specifically about food. Alright, fellow fatties, let's all admit it. We enable and derail each other. We know that our eating habits suck, but for some reason, it feels less abysmal if we aren't disgusting alone. If we drag our friend to Steak n Shake, it doesn't feel as unnecessary as you know that it is. If we aren't the only person who's fat, then it becomes more okay to be fat. We may not do it consciously, and we certainly don't do it maliciously, but we also aren't doing each other any favors.

My example? Today I was at Target shopping for household groceries and I saw the display of Archway cookies for the holidays. As a kid, my mom always got the bells and stars Archway sugar cookies around the holidays as a special treat. There weren't many sugary items in my house growing up, but this was an exception. For a while, they stopped producing (or at least distributing locally) this variety of cookie, and it was kind of sad to see my family tradition go, but in the past couple of years, they've been back on holiday shelves. So 10:45pm finds me grabbing two bags and putting in my cart. For me? Oh no. I'm planning to buy them, drive to my mom's house, and deliver them to her as a gift. This is kind of adorable and certainly motivated by love, but at the end of the day it's super screwed up because my mom is doing the South Beach diet and trying to limit her carb intake. Is it loving of me to show up on her door with cookies that more or less just insult and disregard her difficult and important decision to take care of herself? No. In the end, there are other things to be nostalgic about. I don't need to enable her to show her that I care, so I put the cookies back (sorry, mom). I hope that someone would do the same for me.

Next, let's talk about scapegoating because I really think they're related. When you're unhealthy, you will look for any excuse to continue being unhealthy. It's easy for skinny people to exalt the joys of exercise and clean eating, but when it's something you aren't used to, it's no bueno. I've been on both sides. When I was running every other day, the thought of doing anything else sounded awful, but now I'll look for any excuse to stay on this couch. An object tends to stay on the same course unless acted on by an outside force, whether that course is destructive or productive.

Now, when you're looking for excuses to abandon self-improvement, other people tend to be the easiest scapegoats for that blame. Take, for example, today. My friend and coworker was supposed to go to the cardio room at work with me. She came in and said that she wasn't feeling well and wouldn't be going. Did I go? Of course not. I stayed at my desk and worked for an extra 45 minutes and then drove home. Deep down, I was thankful for her backing out. It gave me license and an excuse to do the same. What's ludicrous about this is that it assumes that she will share the same responsibility for the inevitable results of my choices. She won't. I can blame my friend for my failure to exercise all I want, but in twenty years will I be able to force my diabetes on to her? Will she have to absorb 50% of my fat stores? I think not. The same goes for if I'd been a jerk and showed up at my mom's door with those cookies. If she had eaten them, she could've easily pointed the finger at me and scapegoated me for her failure, but in the end she's the only one who really suffers the consequences, and it's on her to think of herself rather than allowing someone else to pull her off track. No one else really has that power unless you willingly hand it to them. I know that I do that far too frequently when I secretly don't want to behave in a healthier way. It's something I need to commit to stop doing.

Day #7--BPE: Birthday Party Exhaustion

I wish I had a day off tomorrow like you do not even know. Between running around this morning to get last minute supplies for the party, setting up for the party, having the party, and then carting everything home...this mama is pooped! Add to that that Greg and I have to share the TV tonight since the Chiefs are on Sunday Night Football and a new episode of Walking Dead is on, so I won't even start watching Walking Dead until after the game, and I'm already starting out the week exhausted. Oh, and I have a 7:30am meeting. All of this is my choice, of course, and it's a good kind of exhausted, but still.

Today was a "day off" from calorie counting, but to be honest I really wasn't nearly as bad as I thought I would be because I was so darned busy that there wasn't any time. I talked myself out of McDonald's breakfast, which I was pretty proud of. Also, I stepped on the scale this morning and I was at 243lbs--more than 5lbs down in this one week! Now, of course, most of that is water weight, but I'm going to enjoy the moment anyway.

My new worry, for the coming week, is keeping track of calories as I work my way through the glut of leftovers currently sitting in my fridge. I'm torn between wanting to be healthy and wanting to not waste money by not eating leftovers. I think I'll be fine so long as I pace myself.

And, since it's Sunday, it's time to recap this week's goals and start new ones:

This week, I did pretty well on my calorie counting. I counted on 5 of the 7 days (goal was 6) and stayed pretty consistently well below my 2,100 calorie limit. In the area of my cell phone, I started strong, but tapered off. It's certainly something that I want to address, but maybe not so soon. Writing started strong, but tapered too as work and the party took over my time. I did about 1/3rd of my writing goal for the week. In the area of exercise, I walked 3.1 miles, but my goal was 5.

And goals for next week will be:

• Count calories every day
• Try something new with the boys next weekend
• Write 3,000 words (it's gonna happen this time!)
• Work out at least twice (preferably in the cardio room at work)

Hope you all had a lovely weekend!

Day #6--Happy Birthday, Babies!!!

One year ago today, at 5:40am, I was laying on a metal table shaking uncontrollably while a freaking football team of doctors ripped my two sons from a gigantic incision in my abdomen. It was a horrific experience, but it was also the most amazing day ever, and I'm so thankful that I'm alive and well a year later with two wonderful, happy, healthy boys!

On the matter at hand, self-improvement and all that business, I actually had a banner day today. First, we took the boys for a walk this morning. I tried to chicken out and only do the 1.8 mile loop that I usually do, but then I thought about blogging and it motivated me to do more, if only so that I could write up a positive report. We ended up walking 3.1 miles, which is good. I'm obviously not going to meet my 5 mile goal for the week, but I'm glad I didn't have to report a big old goose egg by the end of the week.

Next, I went to the bakery to pick up the cakes for the boys' party tomorrow and stood there for ten minutes staring at the most delicious sugary death ever. I even bought a cookie for Greg since he'd asked me to bring one home and I managed to not buy one for myself! Woot! I kept my calorie count reasonable otherwise. That'll make me feel better about being a bit of a pig tomorrow at the boys' party.

As happy as I am to celebrate the first birthday of my wonderful and amazing children, I will say that it also just hits home even more than before the need for me to get healthy. I've had a year to recover physically, and I really haven't made the progress that I should. I feel like with their first year behind me, the time for excuses is done. Time to get on it!

Goal update...
-Ate 1,804 calories (296 below my daily limit)
-Cell phone thing was somewhat pathetic, but I made at least some effort. Also, I was busy with stuff a lot of the time, so there weren't many opportunities to cell phone it up.
-Didn't write. Fail fail fail.
-Walked 3.1 mile (1.9 miles left to meet my goal for the week)